Her head spun trying to fathom him and the pleasures he was describing. She could barely find her breath now. Couldn’t find the strength to open her eyes, in fact. If he did to her as he promised, then—
A loud cheer went up from the ballroom, accompanied by a flourish from the musicians.
Surprised, she opened her eyes and gazed straight into his, only to lose her breath completely at his predatory stare. As if he wanted to carry her away into the shadows and devour her, like the panther he was dressed to be.
“Midnight,” he rasped out in explanation, his voice hoarse.
She’d lost track of the hour. Not that it mattered. She was his for the evening.
He slipped his hands behind her head. “It’s time.”
She blinked. “Time for—”
He pulled free the ribbon holding her mask in place, and it fell away. Startled, she grabbed frantically for it, but the satin slipped through her fingers and landed on the marble at her feet.
Her face revealed, she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. Monmouth would see her. He would have her arrested for certain now for trespassing, or accuse her of theft, or—oh God, it would be the end of her and her father!
She tried to push past him to flee, but he grabbed her elbow and stopped her.
He stared at her, his eyes wide behind his black mask. For a moment, he was too stunned to move as his gaze swept over her face, then down her body, taking her in and trying to understand the woman who stood before him.
Panic swelled inside her as the party guests spilled out onto the terrace, making it impossible to hide in the shadows. Someone would see her. Recognize her—
Oh, dear God, no! She shoved past him and ran, back inside the house and through the crush toward the front door, disappearing into the night.
Chapter 4
John dug his heels into his horse’s sides and urged the gelding faster across the field. Two nights without sleep. Three days without a note of explanation. Three damnable days of wondering what Cora Bradley had been up to in leaving him those notes. In accepting the invitation to the masquerade. In letting him whisper such things to her that the mere thought of them had his blood boiling in a way that the act itself with other women had never done.
Christ.
She knew who he was. Had to have known all along—
No. She didn’t know. Just as he had no idea until he removed her mask that the exquisite creature who’d captured his imagination through all those letters and stolen kisses was the woman who’d become the bane of his existence.
Apparently, she still didn’t know, or the exasperating Miss Bradley would surely have been at his doorstep by now, demanding an explanation. At gunpoint.
If anyone deserved an explanation it was him. What the devil had she been doing on Monmouth land in the first place, then returning after dark, alone, when it wasn’t safe? He could have been anyone, for Christ’s sake. A criminal. A murderer.
“A damn duke,” he ground out through gritted teeth and lowered himself closer to his mount’s back to urge him on faster.
But all the horses in all the world would never be able to outrun the vexation that ate at him over learning her true identity. Or that even now he wanted nothing more than to carry her away and make love to her.
Unable to stop himself, he reined in the gelding and turned the horse toward the lane that cut through the edge of the woods and past their tree. He didn’t expect a letter after so many days, but his foolish heart wouldn’t give up hope.
He saw it as he neared, appearing on the tree as if through sheer will. He didn’t trust it not to be a mirage. Even as he unpinned it from the trunk, he worried it might be nothing more than a fancy of his imagination.
Then he paused. He’d read dozens of her letters since they’d started their exchange, but this time, the note had his given name written on the outside of the fold. Nothing would be the same between them again.
I wish I could explain why I left the ball the way I did—had it been only we two, I would have stayed and danced away the night with you. We could have watched the sun rise together over the fields at the break of a new day, with new hope, new possibilities…
He clenched his jaw. He’d selfishly wanted just that, and more. But she’d ended those possibilities when she fled. Even after all they’d shared, she refused to trust him once the masks fell away.
I went to the ball looking for a friend and was instead exposed to the enemy.
His heart stuttered. She meant Monmouth. Him.
Damnation, he wasn’t the enemy! If she’d only waited a few seconds more, only saw who he was behind the mask and let him explain—
She would have hated him.
His eyes burned as he read on.
That night was a mistake. Not you, John—you were wonderful, perfect, everything I could have imagined.
Except that he was Monmouth. The man who wanted to put her father’s mill out of business.
We should never have tried to meet, I know that now. Our world should have remained one of letters, where we were safe. So there will be no more notes from me. I hope you understand how much you and your letters meant to me and that I will always carry you in my heart.
Understand? She thought he was the devil himself. A mistake. The enemy. Everything except what he wanted, which was to be accepted as the man he was. He snapped out a curse at her, at himself, at the universe—
He didn’t want understanding. He wanted an explanation. He deserved one, and not in some letter but from her own lips.
He mounted his horse and urged it into a gallop toward the river. And the mill.
Because it was mid-afternoon, the mill was quiet. The door was thrown open to the warm October day, and he paused in the doorway to remove his gloves and allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness inside.
An older man stuck his gray head over the stair railing to call out to him from the floor above. “Good afternoon!”
“And to you.” He stepped inside. “Are you the miller here?”
“Aye.” He grinned good-naturedly and came stiffly down the stairs. With each step, his hips and knees hitched, making him resemble a wooden marionette.
John furrowed his brow at how the man moved. He’d never met Arthur Bradley in person before. He hadn’t been at Bishopswood long enough to meet most of the villagers by simply coming and going through the area, and all the interactions he’d had regarding the mill had been through Cora, with no reason to visit the mill in person when he could send his estate agent or secretary instead and spare himself her wrath.
Now he regretted that distance.
Bradley wiped the dust from his hands as he approached, then frowned at John’s appearance. He wasn’t dressed like someone who brought grain to a mill. “What can I do for you, sir?”
So…Bradley didn’t recognize him. Good. With a smile, he glanced around at the building’s main floor and dodged the question. “You’ve got a fine mill here.”
“Thank you.” Bradley slapped his hand affectionately on one of the beams. “She’s small but fierce.”
He chuckled at the Shakespeare reference. Now he knew where Cora got her wit and education. “And apparently Greek.”
Bradley’s eyes shined in surprise. “You know your mills.”
“Not nearly as much as I should.” The irony behind that was biting. But Cora wasn’t here to give him the explanation he wanted. He slowly circled the small grinding room. “It was an easy guess, since you don’t have a mill wheel or sluice.”
“Aye. Don’t need them. The river’s deep and fast enough to drop a shaft below.” Like a proud parent, he gestured John over to the grinding mechanism and millstones. “We’re built out over the river, so the current drives the paddle below, which turns the bottom grindstone.”
He arched a brow, his knowledge of mills coming to an abrupt end. “The bottom stone?”
“Mills with wheels and windmills rotate the top stone. Ours rotates the
bottom. The grinding takes up less room this way, and there’s less mechanism to upkeep.”
“But your stones are also smaller than others I’ve seen.” John waved a hand to indicate the grindstones. “Which means you grind less grain and take longer to do it.”
Not the best situation for a business. No wonder they made such little profit. Even in a small village the size of Little London, where cows and horses outnumbered the villagers, the mill should have been busy year round.
“Had to build the mill this way. Had no choice.” With a haunted smile, Bradley released the brake to start the wheel turning, then moved over to the large bin that stretched up to the first floor and pulled the lever to spill more grain down onto the grindstones. “I’d fallen in love.”
John’s gaze darted to the miller, but the man’s focus never strayed from the grain falling evenly onto the turning stones.
“I started this mill in order to win my wife’s hand.” He glanced around at the dusty old beams and bags of flour stacked against the walls that were ready to be picked up, the large scale that hung from the central beam, the dozen or so pieces of paper that listed each order pinned to the wall behind the counter in the corner and stirred slightly in the soft afternoon breeze coming through the open doors and windows. “Lucy’s father refused to let me marry her until I was able to provide for her and our children, but all I owned in the world was this tiny piece of land. It wasn’t big enough to farm, but it had trees that I could use to build a mill and the water to power it. So that’s what I did. Had to go into debt to purchase the grindstones, though.” Nostalgia touched his voice. “Took me three years to pay them off, and all that time Lucy waited. She could have had any man in the village, but she believed in me.”
And that was where Cora inherited her resolve. “She sounds like a wonderful woman.”
“Aye, she was.” His eyes glistened, and he looked away, back toward the turning stone and the flour that had begun to fall away to the bin below. “She worked here in the mill with me until she passed.” He crossed to the central pillar and rubbed his hand over a heart and initials carved into the wood, brushing away the flour dust that had gathered there. “Anyone who sees this place thinks it’s only a grist mill, just like any other up or down this river. But when I see it, I see my wife, and when I work here, it’s as if she’s still with me.” He gestured his hand to indicate the entire building. “This is all I have now, this mill and my daughter. This place is my life and my heart.”
“I understand.” And he did. More than Bradley realized. He understood now why Cora had so fiercely resisted the lock and canal, why she’d refused to sell the little mill even when he’d offered her father twice its value. Because it was priceless.
Just as he realized how much he loved her for it.
“Ah, but time marches on, doesn’t it?” Bradley chuckled at his own sentimentality and precariously stepped onto a short stool to peer into the bin to check the grain level. “Don’t know what will become of this place once I’m gone. My daughter cannot run it by herself.”
“That’s a concern far into the future.”
Sadness darkened his face for only a heartbeat. “Not so far,” he mumbled, then wiped his hands on his apron as he stepped off the stool, his old knees jarring as he landed. He jerked a thumb toward the stairs. “You caught me in the midst of filling the hopper.”
“Then by all means, let me help you.” When Bradley eyed his clothing askance, he warned, “Don’t be fooled by appearances. I cut my teeth on hard labor. I reckon I can still lift a bag of grain of two.”
Bradley laughed and led him up the stairs to the first floor, just as stiffly as he’d come down.
John wrestled the open grain sack over to the chute in the floor that led down to the bin below and poured in the wheat. He hurried to pour in as many bags as he could to fill the hopper so that Bradley wouldn’t have to exert himself.
“My gratitude for the help.” Bradley slapped him on the back when the last of the grain rained down into the bin. “But you didn’t come here to fill my hopper. Nor do you have grain to grind or flour to buy.” He gazed at John critically. “So what can I do for you?”
John leaned back against the wall and folded his arms over his chest, studying the man carefully. “I want to tell you a story. And then I need your help in figuring out how it will end.”
Chapter 5
Cora slid a sideways glance at Monmouth’s profile as he sat next to her on the bench seat of the dog-cart they’d taken out onto his estate. He wasn’t at all the man she’d expected him to be. Which raised the question…what kind of man was he, exactly?
This was the third day in a row that they’d driven out to the far reaches of his property to visit his tenants. Yet this was the first day that he’d sent his groom on ahead, leaving them alone without a chaperone. But she supposed she didn’t need one, not when she wasn’t a fine lady who needed to protect her reputation at all costs. Not when driving with a man was a perfectly normal thing to do in the country. No one who saw them together on the dog-cart would have given them a second thought.
Except for her.
Her eyes narrowed on him. What did he want with her? She’d come along to help him distribute baskets of little whatnots—candles, a small bag of flour, a few eggs, figs, and apples, all tucked into the little box beneath the cart’s seat—and to check in on each family to make certain they all had what they needed before winter arrived. A noble outing, she had to concede, yet she’d only agreed to accompany him because he’d come in person to the mill to ask for her help and give her an opportunity to make him beholden to her.
And because Papa had insisted. Although why her father would agree, she had no idea, but she thought she’d sensed an odd camaraderie between the two men during the past three mornings when the duke arrived with his carriage to start their day.
Grudgingly, she had to admit that she’d enjoyed the time they’d spent together, including their picnic luncheons taken on blankets beneath trees when they’d stopped for an afternoon break. He’d proven to be more witty and sharp than she’d given him credit for, with the intelligence necessary to efficiently run his estate yet with an empathy for the people who lived there. And he certainly possessed a drier, yet far funnier, sense of humor than she’d assumed.
What surprised her most, though, were his keen observations about the land and nature, his detailed descriptions of what he’d learned so far about his new estate that stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see. The man possessed a poet’s eye. While that stood in contradiction to the ruthless businessman she knew him to be, the juxtaposition didn’t make her uneasy. Instead, she was loath to admit, he fascinated her, right down to his well-worn boots that showed he was no stranger to hard work.
No longer bothering to try to hide her uncertainty about him, she turned to face him on the small seat and demanded, “Who are you?”
“You know who I am.” He flicked the ribbons and quickened the pace of the trotting horse. “The Duke of Monmouth.”
“Yes, yes.” She waved a gloved hand, dismissing that too-easy answer. “But who are you? You’re certainly not behaving like any duke I’ve ever heard tell of, going out of your way to take baskets to your tenants yourself when your land agent could easily do it.”
Should have done it, in fact, leaving the duke at the manor where his kind preferred to be, rather than having to interact with people who might not know where the next rent payment would come from or blame him for their tenuous situations. Who had every reason to dislike the new lord and tell him so. Right to his face.
Instead, what she’d heard at every farmhouse and cottage they’d stopped at was how kind he was as a landowner. Bringing them baskets and checking on them personally was simply proof of that in their eyes. More, they gushed with excitement about the potential opportunities they credited him with for creating jobs for them and their extended families at the factories to the northeast. Thanks to his canal, the
one that her father’s mill was currently stopping.
Comments like those gnawed at her. She would have suspected he’d somehow bribed or forced the farmers and their families to say such things in front of her, except that she knew several of the tenants personally and knew he’d never be able to coerce them like that. No, their sentiments toward the man were genuine, drat him.
“I’m a new duke who only received this title and land due to a fluke of birth,” he explained with chagrin. “A new duke who doesn’t know what to do with all he’s been given because he’s used to working hard to earn everything he’s ever gotten before in life. That’s who I am.”
The tiny muscles in her belly tightened in empathy. “Your Grace, I had—”
“John, please.” With that correction, he cast her a long, hopeful glance. But he didn’t seem to garner the reaction from her that he’d wanted, and his shoulders sagged. “When we’re out here alone, like this, I would prefer that you call me by my Christian name.”
“All right,” she agreed, a bit reluctantly. He might be a new duke who was unsure of his position, but he was still a duke.
“As for this week’s outings, I’m doing them because I want to get to know my tenants, and I can’t do that through a land agent, no matter how good the man is at his job. I also want to let them know that I’m approachable and always ready to listen to their concerns.”
Hmmm…“Are you?”
His lips quirked into a half-grin. Then he surprised the daylights out of her by pulling off his right glove and daring to reach up to stroke his knuckles over her cheek.
He drawled, “I think I’m very approachable.”
For a moment, she could do nothing but stare at him, stunned at his audacity, as her heart somersaulted in her chest. He’d overstepped his bounds, by a goodly ways, yet inexplicably she couldn’t find it within her to scold him for it. “I meant about listening to their concerns.”
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